Pikeman Archive

Short answer :

Defensive: I've always felt that the pikeman should be the most defensive class in the game capable of defending yourself and anyone close to you from multiple opponents(sort of a guardsman for the group). This would include good blocking, multi sweeps, etc.

The trade off: Moderate damage dealing if we have superior defensive abilities.

Couple other things:

Can we please do something about the silly small range we have . Pikes may have really been 4m, but if a person with a 1m or less weapon is getting that much reach why arent we getting more?

I'll take decreased damage if I could get some awesome defense.

Let speed, accuracy, and damage all be at a lower level *but* give me the ability to be able to stand up to massive abuse and whatnot with my uber skill at block/counterattack (ya right).

I mean really this is what my friends have me around for now anyways. I'm like a pet that talks back. I go in first, attack multiple targets and then keep the focus on myself whilst they deal out damage from the sidelines.

I really think this is the way it should be as history has proven. Pikers should be uber-defense.

Really good stuff in here..I like the idea that our class is defined by the weapon we are holding.

1. I want us to be area attack gods, with bleeds, and KD's

2. Our defense should depend on which weapon we are weilding at the time.

3. We should be slow

4. Refer to Antares post...Click here I pretty much agree with everything he said.

I would have to say Antares pretty much nailed it.

In my opinion, no melee calss can be offensive. We are unable to get to a ranged target, if they have any clue. With the occasional sneaking up on them, or blindsiding. Creatures are a different matter.

That leaves us as defensive players. In my experience, a pikemans role is right in the middle of things. We have area attacks, that are second to none, and this is where we should expand. I'm not going to wax poetic on dps, or enhanced range modifiers, since that involves math, and many are way better at it.

My style is to run into the middle of any group, and start dealing damage. I always try to protect others, and hope they are thinking in a similar group way. If I take the aggro, its not to get all the xp (I'm a master, what would I do with it), I'm trying to free up the group to do some damage of their own. Nothing is more frustrating, than trying to help a ranged player who is being attacked, and running away from you. I make sure to tell my group the rules of pikeman. Stay close. If you are getting hit, stay close, If you want to help me, stay close. If you want me to help you, stay close. Throw me a stim now and then, and we are golden.

We should be masters of the crowd. Able to swat them down, dizzy em up, and make em bleed. In between these moves, masters of the defend. We are no good, if every hit lands, and we're incapped in 5 seconds. Perhaps our HAM costs could decrease as we reach higher levels. We are supposed to be more proficient with our weapon, so our bodies must have adjusted to its weight, etc. By master, swinging the big stick should be effortless and second nature. It has become the extention of our selves.

Chirac biwan: Mohr

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Don't be so proud of this technological terror you've created. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

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Ranxero wrote:

By master, swinging the big stick should be effortless and second nature. It has become the extention of our selves.

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OMG great post antares. You hit the nail on the head on pikeman and the other melee professions.

here is where i see everything, becouse i know you want to know so much.

TKA-Status effects, decent damage, able to target multiple things, defenseive,basicly your "jack of all trades class". They can kinda do most stuff that the other people can, but master vs. master should loose.

Fencer- Fast as hell, accurate, light damage, wiley(dodge), Extreamly low ham costs. Like 40 for hit 3. But their damage is what suffers. They do a little less than a TKA.

heavy sword- Slow, brutally damaging, Highest DPS by alot. TONS of woundage. Terrible defenses.

pikeman- i mostly agree with antares here. Pikeman should do great deals of damage but probably only 3/4 or 4/5 of what swordsman do at ruffly the same speeds. Area masters, and knockdown masters. I think both sweep moves should target action all the time. we should be as at home fighting multiple enemies as we are fighting one. A good defensive move might be, we can't do special moves for the duration of the move but we can only be attacked by one enemy....thus keeping several tangled up withought killing ourselves or making us overpowered. But while not in a defensive stance we are decent damage dealers and have good defenses....maybe our toughness should be low but our melee defense should be really really high. And make it pikeman melee defense, so people don't dabble. i also think taht our KD timer shoudl be lower, so we can knock down people a little more often, like maybe 15 or 20 seconds, but that isa touchy issue.

i just got final fantasy X-2...so instead of thinking about this and fleshing out my response....i am gonna go....good luck, give those devs hell!

also it would make sense that if pikeman retain AP2, that swordsman get AR3...swordsman should have higher armour peircing.

Now if I understand most of what people are saying and the game, toughness should mean you are more defensive with the weapon you hold. So I think we should have one of the highest toughness? Truthfully I wouldn't care one bit if we sucked horribly at offense as long as we had something to counteract this like maybe good defense.

The Underlining problem we seem to have is that we're giving good weapons but we just suck as a class unless we add other professions to our belt. We don't really need a bunch of toughness. If there is any other way to fix it I would be happy to have that. I don't think we need to be able to beat TKA or Fencer in PvP. We just need to be able to tank PvE.

Fencer and TKA have great agility and rightly so but thats a thinking person that can use tactics to get by our lance because they are quick and can use it to their advantage. Swordsman aren't as quick so we should be able to hold them off.

But a creature of the wild, even with high agility can be pretty stupid and with a huge pike I would think we can hold it off pretty easily.

Being able to area attacks that knock down is a given. With a big polearm and if your in a bunch of guys and spin around aiming at their legs you "Might knock someone down"

We should also do maybe some good armor piercing since we have huge heavy weapons with a blade on the end of it. So you can make us slow but maybe give us heavy armor piercing?

Bottom line I see us as good defense to which we have none that I see beside the armor that everyone can get. And the missing and slowness we have right now isn't an issue as long as we would have heavy damage and heavy armor piercing.

I made a post on this a little while ago that didnt seem to get much attenion. The post said the basic things that antares said without going into details. It should be here : http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pikeman&message.id=9722

Me, i came to pikeman cus i was a rifleman and wanned to have melee class to complete my ranged class. Since i was looking for defense, i figured that pikeman would be the best option for the stacking blocks. Little did i know that block is broken but thats another topic.

Since then, ive fallen in love with the class, evem with all the problem

One thing is true about polearms that cant b denied: They are defensive weapons. Regardless of if youre using a staff or a long axe. Pikemen were used to defend towns, they were the guards that would keep the place safe, they would b the ones defending agaisnt a charge of the cavalry.

I could be wrong, but I dont think that pikemen were never used as attack untis, at least not effective ones.

So they should be a defensive class, either psssive, with blocks or active with moves like the one antares mention that would keep the enemies at bay.

Heavy damage should be done by the swordsmen, they are attack units, they should know how to strike their weapon on the best, most damaging ways.

Also, ive seen mention that we were designed as the area attack class. This is wrong, a myth. Pikeman has the same amount of area attacks as any other melee class with the exception of TKA. Fencer has area blind and area dizzy, swordsman has area posture change plus other area attacks (not sure if any state effect ones).

So Defense is the word for pikeman, one way or the other.

One trouble with being best at area affects is that it makes advancing very difficult. The hardest part of my climb to master was right near the end. The reason was that the XP you get fora particular critter drops off the more boxes you fill in. I got to a point where it was hard to find something that I could kill the wasn't worth a pitiful amount of points (this happened when I was 2,4,4,3).

The problem with being expected to fight groups is that the only thing I was able to fight groups of at that point were things that were too small to be worth fighting. So while it was fun to watch 6 womp rats fall over in unison, I only got 6 polearm XP and 6 combat XP for doing it. This is especially annoying if you're not also a CH since most things of good size are also social, meaning you're going to end up fighting more than 1 unless you have a pet for crowd control.

The creature rebalance may fix this (since the falloff in XP is determined by the creature's CL, and the CL's as they exist on the live servers are currently nonsensical). We'll see.

--Insomnia